Curry, the climate 'heretic' who converted from warmist to challenging the 'consensus' speaks at National Press Club in DC: 'The main problem is we are putting the policy cart before the scientific horse'

Curry on Eve of NYC UN Summit: 'Relying on global international treaty to solve the problem -- which I do not think would really solve the problem even if it was implemented -- is politically unviable and economically unviable.'

Curry on CO2 control knob: 'Even on the timescale of decade or two, we could end up be very surprised on how the climate plays out and it might not be getting warmer like the UN IPCC says. We don’t know what going to happen. All other things being equal – yes -- more carbon dioxide means warmer, but all other things are never equal. We just don’t know. I think we are fooling ourselves to think that CO2 control knob really influences climate on these decadal or even century time scales.'

Curry on intimidation: 'If I were nontenured scientist, I would fear for my job! But I am a senior scientist with retirement in my sight, so I can afford to do what I want, say what I think.'

Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry, who was until recently the Chair of School of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology, detailed her conversion from a scientist who accepted the global warming “consensus” on man-made global warming to one who now openly challenges it. Curry spoke at the National Press Club in Washington DC on September 16 at an event sponsored by the George C. Marshall Institute.

Curry warned of possible global cooling. “We also see a cooling period starting around the turn of the (21st) century.” She also suggested that the “current cool phase will continue until the 2030s.”

“Even on the timescale of decade or two, we could end up be very surprised on how the climate plays out and it might not be getting warmer like the UN IPCC says,” Curry noted.

“We don’t know what going to happen. All other things being equal – yes — more carbon dioxide means warmer, but all other things are never equal,” she emphasized.

“We just don’t know. I think we are fooling ourselves to think that CO2 control knob really influences climate on these decadal or even century time scales,” she added.

“I view the [climate change] problem as a ‘big wicked mess,” Curry told the crowd at luncheon assembled. “The main problem is we are putting the policy cart before the scientific horse,” Curry said.

Curry believes the United Nations has distorted the research of global warming and shifted too much on carbon dioxide as the “control knob” of the climate system. “Climate scientists have focused primarily on greenhouse gases,” Curry noted, linking that focus on the IPCC’s focus and the funding streams available to scientists who focus on CO2.

“Other factors relatively neglected,” Curry declared. “The early articulation of a preferred policy option by the UN framework marginalized research on broader issues surrounding climate change and resulted in an overconfident assessment of the importance of greenhouse gases in future climate change and stifled development of a broad range of policy options.”

“You cannot even talk about these kinds of issues in the mainstream climate debate. We get called ‘deniers’. This is a very sad state of affairs,” she noted.

“Careerism is a big problem. It much more beneficial to join the dominant paradigm, rather than to fight against it,” Curry explained.

“If I were nontenured scientist, I would fear for my job! But I am a senior scientist with retirement in my sight, so I can afford to do what I want, say what I think.”

“I no longer write government grant proposals. I have lot more independence. I truly feel liberated by not having to chase dollars,” she added.

Curry lamented the current state of academia. “There is a system in place with an emphasis on paper counts, an emphasis on dollars, and it is very difficult to dig in and work on hard problem. You have got to keep cranking it out. I really despair. I really despair,” she said.

“I see more of our graduates going into private sector rather than academia,” she added.

Curry was optimistic about how the internet is changing things for the better. “Social media is changing things like crazy. The whole emphasis on peer review being challenged by social media and open access journals. The whole dynamic of research and higher academia is changing for the better,” she explained.

“I was on that treadmill, I am mostly off it now and it is very liberating to be off that treadmill,” she added.

Severe Weather

Curry also challenged the notion that there was more “extreme weather” today. “Much of the severe weather we think we are seeing right now — you look back to the 1930 and 1950s and this is what we were seeing also. This is weather amnesia,” she noted.

“Sandy was a category one, when it struck. There is nothing exceptional about a category one hurricane striking New York City. What was exceptional was the damage and this was associated with extreme wealth and development in that region,” she said.

“We have seen that the hurricane landfalls have become fewer in last few decades overall. So you cannot blame it on global warming,” she said.

Sea Level Rise

Curry downplayed sea level rise fears. “If you look back to the 1930 and 1940s, the rate of sea level rise was at least as large as recent values when there was little contribution of human caused warming.”

“Bangladesh, this is the poster child for sea level rise – has an estimated only 10-15% of their sea level rise associated with warming, the rest of it is associated with land use issues and geological issues. So trying to cure the sea level problem by reducing warming — even if that were possible — is only going to address a fraction of the sea level rise issue,” Curry said.

Judith Curry, Professor and chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology: ‘Given the widespread nature of the infection and intrinsic motivated reasoning. We need to put down the IPCC as soon as possible’

Key Points: There is a ‘growing realization that you can’t control climate by emissions reductions’

1 comment:

Judith Curry has good company. One group of NASA scientists and their colleagues (led by Norman Loeb) have stuck a pin in the alarmist conclusions drawn by James Hansen and his colleagues, more likely his subordinates.

To see the NASA numbers that show what a mess this problem is have a look at this blog:

If climate sensitivity is as low as +1.3 degC that means radiative transfer to the world ocean is only +58 Wm-2. This inference is drawn from Roy Spencer's model of heat diffusion into the top 700 meters of the ocean, supported by this paper.

This amount of net radiation is about 0.17% (1 part in 340) of the total incoming solar radiation. (Loeb et al 2012 based on Hansen et al 2011)

The travesty is in the fact that the ERROR in estimating total incoming and total outgoing solar radiation is ten times greater than the amount of heat energy claimed to be captured by man-made Greenhouse gases.

Let's say I spend $340 per week and earn $340.58 per week. Can I be certain of saving 58 cents per week, about $30 per year?

If either or both my income or my spending can be higher or lower than expected by $5.80 per week. I could be ahead in the long run by $600 per year or in the hole by $600 per year.

When stated as weekly pay using the same numbers as NASA has measured for the radiative driver of the climate system, the absurdity is obvious.

Conclusions about AGW based on NASA's measurements of net radiative flux are meaningless, as demonstrated by Loeb et al (2012) and supported by Kopp and Lean (2011) cited by Loeb.

The alarmists have a fine theory but they don't have numbers that make sense. You cannot confirm a theory with a numerical result whose error bands are ten times greater than your result.